by ALLEN
SINEL,
Professor Emeritus,
History Department
The play dramatically
reveals the clash of two
fundamentally different economic value systems,
the
one rooted in the Russian institution of serfdom,
the
other drawn from western, profit-seeking capitalism.
A century ago, as The
Cherry Orchard was being
created, Russia
was in the midst of one of its periodic crises
of transition.
Powerful forces for change battered Russia's traditional,
agrarian-based government and society. Educated
Russians led
by the intelligentsia demanded a share in government
and relief
for the oppressed masses; ethnic minorities fought
against the
state's attempts at Russification and for greater
national self-expression;
women challenged traditional gender roles and joined
the ranks of revolutionaries and professionals.
But most relevant
for Chekhov's audience was the profound upheaval
in Russia's
socioeconomic structure. While the emancipation
of the serfs had
occurred over forty years earlier, two of its most
fundamental
consequences reached critical proportions only
at the turn of the
century: the land hunger and increasing impoverishment
of the
peasants and the growing impoverishment of the
land-owning
gentry. Equally crucial, as the rural economy declined,
capitalism
and industrialization made great strides; Russia
experienced one
of Europe's most rapid surges of industrial growth
in the 1890s.
It is, of course, these last two developments
- the decline of the
gentry and the rise of entrepreneurial capitalism
- that figure most
prominently in The
Cherry Orchard. Chekhov brilliantly
portrays
the landed gentry's failure to cope with the economic
realities
of early twentieth-century Russia, their inability,
literally, to
understand the language of the new economic forces,
given such
clear expression in the play by Lopakhin, the peasant
turned
businessman. To be fair, he understands them no
better. It is as if
they live in two different worlds and belong to
two different
paradigms of economic thinking - they talk
past one another and never truly converse. The
play dramatically reveals the clash of
two fundamentally different economic value systems,
the one
rooted in the Russian institution of serfdom, the
other drawn from
western, profit-seeking capitalism. A significant
portion of the
landed gentry, epitomized in the play by Ranevskaya,
her brother
Gayev and their neighbour Simeonov-Pishchik, grew
up on
estates where serfs, through labour or quit-rent,
provided a steady, if not always sufficient, income
and
a host of other domestic services. Serfdom, because
one rarely paid for peasant labour and often took
its costs for granted, minimized and obscured the
need for rational
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economic
calculation. Thus, Chekhov's landowning family
could plant its cherry orchard
in a far too northerly locale and even "lose" the
recipe that gave the orchard some fiscal via-bility.
The "perpetual" student and gently satirized
member of the intelligentsia, Trofimov, quite rightly
sees a serf behind each cherry tree. The cherry
orchard is a luxury that only serfdom made possible. Dependent
on others for their well-being, never having learned
the "value of money," the gentry are
like children. They expect their financial salvation
to come in the form of a windfall: a gift from
a wealthy relative, a winning lottery ticket, the
marriage of Anya to a rich husband, a loan from
a friend. Indeed, Simeonov-Pishchik is saved by
outside intervention, the discovery of porcelain-suitable
clay on his property, a resource, of course, to
be developed by others. Lopakhin stands in stark
contrast. The archetypal entrepreneur, a self-made
man whose family actually were serfs on the Ranevskaya
estate, he knows exactly how to maximize profits,
to take advantage of the new economic opportunities
in Russia and is most willing to offer his expertise
to his impoverished gentry friends. Recognizing
the potential of the estate's riverside property
now made easily accessible to the nearby town's
growing population by that great symbol of modern
industrialization, the railroad, Lopakhin sets
out a comprehensive plan of real estate development
that should solve the gentry's fiscal problems
for decades. This "perfect" solution
meets with disdain and incomprehension. The gentry
cannot adapt to these new economic forces and may
well not really understand them. On the other hand,
one must also remember that Lopakhin's so-called
solution entails the destruction of exactly what
the gentry wanted to save: the cherry orchard,
the last powerful symbol of a value system not
based on bottom-line economies.
But before one joins Lopakhin in dismissing these
outmoded values and their "feckless" proponents,
one should note that the cherry orchard won the
region a place in the Encyclopedia and that Lopakhin's
obsession with profit distracts him from what seems
an optimal match with Varya and even leads him
to begin cutting down the orchard before its previous
owners have left. A century ago, Chekhov knew that
the choice between even an unproductive but still
beautiful and renowned cherry orchard and tawdry
if profitable real estate development was not simple.
With the full-scale triumph of the "bottom
liners" today, how much more meaningful is
his humanist portrayal of this fundamental conflict
of values for the present-day audience.
On the other hand,
one must also remember that Lopakhin's so-called
solution entails the destruction of exactly what
the gentry wanted to save: the cherry orchard,
the last powerful symbol of a value system not
based on bottom-line economies. |
